Thesis Proposal

            For my thesis piece I plan on coding an interactive music program that can be controlled with a simple MIDI keyboard in real time by the viewer. The program will interpret notes played on the keyboard and plot it out in a radial fashion, which on a 360 degree completion, would come out as a certain shape. The shape is wholly determined by the user through interaction with the keyboard (what notes he plays and for how long). I have already posted sketches of the shapes I would like to work with as well as a new shape that I am experimenting with (shown below).

            The core idea of my project would be the visualization of sound, or rather, using sound to create visuals. I am going to focus on static images however because as I have said earlier I want to create physical shapes from sound, each one a personal ID. The user will draw with the keyboard and form his own custom shape that is different from anyone else’s. I would like these shapes to be displayed on a projector so each users piece is featured for a brief time period. Another component to this installation would be a series of digital prints comparing different genres of music and different applications of sound shapes (I hope to have at least three distinct radial patterns to choose from).

            Currently I am still in the coding phase and will be delving into Pure Data, which is a program specifically designed for music visualization (as suggested by my design professor Atif). I have just purchased a MIDI keyboard and I will begin testing with it as soon as possible. I realize that there is a lot that can go wrong when it comes to computer programming so that is why I’m starting as soon as I can. 

Thesis Journal Entry

I haven't really been keeping up with this journal but I've definately gotten far with my thesis project (at least the programming portion of it). Already Ive managed to map out a song in a radial pattern and create different shapes as pictured below:

 

 While this is good so far I would like to take it further by separating the high and low frequencies and if possible the middle frequencies and giving them their own spectrum. The result (I'm hoping) would look something like this:

And then eventually colored:

 

As of now these last two are just sketches and I have to work out sizing and coloring issues as well as figuring out a way to program the computer to map real time data from a MIDI keyboard. However I feel I'm heading in the right direction and I just need to work out a few things.

Here are some more images from other songs I've sampled:

Zoomed out for scale.

Zoomed out and sped up to reveal each frequency bar.